Animating the Page with Flash 5

In this sample chapter you will learn the basic concepts you need in order to create animation in Flash movies. Gain an understanding of what an animation is, learn the difference between the speed and the length of your animation, and what interface elements the Flash editor contains to help you create and control your animation.

This chapter is from the book

This chapter is from the book

You have totally re-created the Shelley Biotech homepage graphics with Flash.
Now comes the fun part: animating it! In this chapter you will learn the basic
concepts you need to create animation in Flash movies. You will gain an
understanding of what an animation is, the difference between the speed and the
length of your animation, and what interface elements the Flash editor contains
to help you create and control your animation.

Creating the Link Text Symbol

Take a look at the current page, Figure
21. The links on the page will all appear to move together in our
animation. To allow us to do this easily, we can create a single graphic symbol
that contains all of them grouped together.

If you haven't already done so, move the Link Text layer over the
Circles layer.

Click on one of the lines connecting the circles. This will select all
the lines and circles, because we grouped them earlier.

Choose Modify → Ungroup.

Choose Edit → Deselect All.

Use the Arrow and the Shift key to select all of the lines. If you
accidentally select something else, just click on it again with the Shift key
held down to deselect it and leave everything else selected.

Choose Edit → Cut.

Select the Logo layer.

Choose Edit → Paste in Place. You have now moved the
lines to the new layer. They are in front of the circles, but we'll be
moving them in a moment.

With the lines still selected, choose Modify →
Group.

Finally, make the lines into a symbol by selecting Insert→
Convert to Symbol. Name this symbol "Lines" set its behavior to
Graphic. See Figure
23.

Adding an Additional Background Layer

Both the white and the brown curves making up the background will be
animated. We need a separate layer for each.

Click on the Background layer. This layer currently contains both of the
background curves.

Choose Insert Layer from the Layer menu. This will place a new layer
immediately above the Background layer.

Rename this "Background 1."

Select the white curve. Choose Edit → Cut.

Select the Background 1 layer and choose Edit → Paste in
Place.

Rename the original Background layer "Background 2."

Creating Some Layers for the Circles

The last organizational change you need to make involves moving each of the
seven circles to separate layers so each can be animated separately.

Select the Background 1 layer and create seven new layers.

Name them as follows: Press Releases, Research, Contact Us, Investors,
Vendors, About Us, and Products. Don't worry about the order; we will
adjust that in a moment.

We need to move each one of our current circles to one of these new
layers. For each of our seven circles, select it, choose Edit → Cut,
click on the appropriate new layer (according to the text link overlapping it),
and choose Edit → Paste in Place.

When all the circles have been moved, the Circles layer will have nothing
left in it. Get rid of it by selecting it and choosing Delete Layer from the
Layer menu.

Select and drag the layers up and down to move them. Put your layers in the
following order, from top to bottom:

Header Text. This is the Shelley Biotech banner and associated
shadow.

Link Text.

Address Text.

Address Sphere. This is the sphere under the Address Text.

Office Photo.

Link Circle layers. Each of the seven circles should be in a separate
layer.

Frames and Animation

One of the most important aspects of a Flash movie is the animation, which is
nothing more than a series of still images, displayed over time. Each of these
still images is called a frame. The speed at which the frames are displayed is
controlled by the fps (frames per second) setting in Flash. A setting of 12 fps,
which is the default setting, means that 12 frames will be displayed every
second.

There are two ways to change the fps value:

Double-click the fps box, which is located just below the timeline. See
Figure 24.

Both of these open the Movie Properties dialog box, shown in Figure
25. The first blank on this dialog box contains the frame rate. A
rate between 8 and 15 is recommended. This range allows relatively speedy processing
of the animation while retaining smoothness of motion. For our animation, make
sure the value is set at 12.

FIGURE 25
The Movie Properties dialog box. The frames per second rate can be changed here.

Tweening and Keyframes

Before the advent of computers, cartoon animators had to draw each frame of
an animation. Although you can do that with Flash, you are provided with a
time-saving method of animation that requires you to create only the most
important frames. Flash creates the intermediate frames for you. This is called
tweening. In using tweening, you create only special frames, called
keyframes, to serve as turning points during an animation, and Flash fills in
the gaps. For example, if you wanted to animate an object moving to the right,
hitting the edge of the screen, and moving left, you would only have to create
three keyframes, and tell Flash to do the rest.

Adding Keyframes to the Shelley Biotech Page

We can now put in place the keyframes we will need for the Shelley page.

We now need to select the thirtieth frame of all the layers. To do this,
click and hold on the frame area at the 30 frame mark of the top layer and
drag downward until all the layers are selected, as shown in Figure
26. This is a little tricky.

We still have no animation, even though we have multiple
frames. If you click on the first or last keyframe or any frame in between, you
will notice that nothing changes. Two things still need to be done: First, you
select a keyframe and make some change to the graphic at that point. Then you
must tell Flash what kind of tweening to use. Flash can tween the movement of an
object as well as its shape and color.

The next section will show you how to animate the graphics on this page. One
final note: The graphics we created in Chapter 1, "The Basics," are
the final product of the animation. We will be working backward and modifying
the first keyframe, while leaving the last one alone. To get a clearer picture
of this, go look at the finished product at
http://www.phptr.com/essential/flash5/shelley/new/
and notice that the page ends up looking like our current file, but looks
totally different when you first see it.